In the second half of the nineteenth century a new kind of social and cultural actor came to the fore: the expert. During this period complex processes of modernization, industrialization, urbanization, and nation-building gained pace, particularly in Western Europe and North America. These processes created new forms of specialized expertise that grew in demand and became indispensible in fields like sanitation, incarceration, urban planning, and education. Often the expertise needed stemmed from problems at a local or regional level, but many transcended nation-state borders. Experts helped shape a new transnational sphere by creating communities that crossed borders and languages, sharing knowledge and resources through those new communities, and by participating in special events such as congresses and world fairs.

Our continued use of the combustion engine car in the 21st century, despite many rational arguments against it, makes it more and more difficult to imagine that transport has a sustainable future. Offering a sweeping transatlantic perspective, this book explains the current obsession with automobiles by delving deep into the motives of early car users. It provides a synthesis of our knowledge about the emergence and persistence of the car, using a broad range of material including novels, poems, films, and songs to unearth the desires that shaped our present "car society." Combining social, psychological, and structural explanations, the author concludes that the ability of cars to convey transcendental experience, especially for men, explains our attachment to the vehicle.

This study considers the impact of industrialisation, revolution and world war on women's working lives in Russia. Unlike existing studies this new text looks at women from all social classes. In the process the authors reveal how the stereotypical portrayal of Russian women's work as a struggle of endurance and sacrifice distorts and oversimplifies the reality of their experience between 1880 and 1930.

Hindenburg: Power, Myth, and the Rise of the Nazis reveals how a previously little-known general, whose career to normal retirement age had provided no real foretaste of his heroic status, became a national icon and living myth in Germany after the First World War, capturing the imagination of millions. In a period characterized by rupture and fragmentation, the legend surrounding Paul von Hindenburg brought together a broad coalition of Germans and became one of the most potent forces in Weimar politics. Charting the origins of the myth, from Hindenburg's decisive victory at the Battle of Tannenberg in 1914 to his death in Nazi Germany and beyond, Anna von der Goltz explains why the presence of Hindenburg's name on the ballot mesmerized an overwhelming number of voters in the presidential elections of 1925. His myth-an ever-evolving phenomenon-increasingly transcended the dividing lines of interwar politics, which helped him secure re-election by left-wing and moderate voters. Indeed, the only two times in German history that the people could elect their head of state directly and secretly, they chose this national icon. Hindenburg even managed to defeat Adolf Hitler in 1932, making him the Nazi leader's final arbiter; it was he who made the final and fateful decision to appoint Hitler as Chancellor in January 1933.

In Degeneration and Revolution: Radical Cultural Politics and the Body in Weimar Germany Robert Heynen explores the impact of conceptions of degeneration, exemplified by eugenics and social hygiene, on the social, cultural, and political history of the left in Germany, 1914-33. Hygienic practices of bodily regulation were integral to the extension of modern capitalist social relations, and profoundly shaped Weimar culture. Heynen's innovative interdisciplinary approach draws on Marxist and other critical traditions to examine the politics of degeneration and socialist, communist, and anarchist responses. Drawing on key Weimar theorists and addressing artistic and cultural movements ranging from Dada to worker-produced media, this book challenges us to rethink conventional understandings of left culture and politics, and of Weimar culture more generally.

The origins of the Second World War remain clouded in Churchillian mythology. Sixty years on, Peter Neville's controversial book provides an essential reassessment of the appeasement myths by examining a central yet understudied figure. Sir Nevile Henderson has been vilified as 'our Nazi Ambassador in Berlin' by historians and popular memory alike. He has remained in disgrace despite the widespread historical rethinking of appeasement in recent years. Yet there has never before been a book-length study of Henderson despite his central role as Britain's Ambassador. Peter Neville's important reassessment draws upon primary documents to overturn orthodox interpretations. While Henderson's analysis of the Nazi regime was seriously flawed, history has vastly overstated his influence. In presenting the first full and close analysis of what Henderson himself called 'the failure of a mission', the author has made a pathbreaking contribution to the history of appeasement.

Beginning in the late 19th century, competing ideas about motherhood had a profound impact on the development and implementation of social welfare policies. Calls for programmes aimed at assisting and directing mothers emanated from all quarters of the globe, advanced by states and voluntary organizations, liberals and conservatives, feminists and anti-feminists - a phenomenon that scholars have since termed 'maternalism'. This volume reassesses maternalism by providing critical reflections on prior usages of the concept, and by expanding its meaning to encompass geographical areas, political regimes and cultural concerns that scholars have rarely addressed. From Argentina, Brazil and Mexico City to France, Italy, the Netherlands, the Soviet Ukraine, the United States and Canada, these case studies offer fresh theoretical and historical perspectives within a transnational and comparative framework. As a whole, the volume demonstrates how maternalist ideologies have been employed by state actors, reformers and poor clients, with myriad political and social ramifications.

This series is designed for students of all abilities at A Level and Scottish Higher Grade. Each chapter includes questions at the beginning which cover a range of core objectives, such as causation, continuity and change, interpretation and source evaluations. These questions also provide a clear focus for the chapter. Task sections at the end of each chapter develop study skills and exam technique. They give guidance on how to make notes, answer typical essays and source questions, and deal with questions of historiographical interpretation.

These essays by nine distinguished historians deal with prominent personalities in German history over the last two centuries; and they are dominated by two themes. First, they trace the growth and flowering of German culture in areas like print and architecture and painting and how this transformed relationships and procedures in everyday life. Second, they follow the rise of a political consciousness on the part of the Germans, and the consequences this consciousness had for nationalism in the 19th and 20th centuries. In throwing light on the art of Schinkel and Liebermann, on the undertakings of Lichtwark, on the policies of Bismarck, and on the ordeals of Rathenau and Hitler and Beck and Faulhaber and Brandt, these nine essays offer a salutary guidepost to a past that is as rich as it is terrifying.

Six million people visit Prague Castle each year. Here is the story of how this ancient citadel was transformed after World War I from a neglected, run-down relic into the seat of power for independent Czechoslovakia-and the symbolic center of democratic postwar Europe. The restoration of Prague Castle was a collaboration of three remarkable figures in twentieth-century east central Europe: Tomas Masaryk, the philosopher who became Czechoslovakia's first president; his daughter Alice, a social worker trained in the settlement houses of Chicago who was founding director of the Czechoslovak Red Cross and her father's trusted confidante; and the architect, Joze Plecnik of Slovenia, who integrated reverence for Classical architecture into distinctly modern designs. Their shared vision saw the Castle not simply as a government building or historic landmark but as the sacred center of the new republic, even the new Europe-a place that would embody a different kind of democratic politics, rooted in the spiritual and the moral. With a biographer's attention to detail, historian Bruce Berglund presents lively and intimate portraits of these three figures. At the same time, he also places them in the context of politics and culture in interwar Prague and the broader history of religion and secularization in modern Europe. Gracefully written and grounded in a wide array of sources, Castle and Cathedral in Modern Prague is an original and accessible study of how people at the center of Europe, in the early decades of the twentieth century, struggled with questions of morality, faith, loyalty, and skepticism.

The author of such classic works as The Republican Roosevelt, V Was for Victory, and Years of Discord, John Morton Blum is one of a small group of intellectuals who for more than a quarter of a century dominated the writing of American political history. Writing now of his own career, Blum provides a behind-the-scenes look at Ivy League education and political power from the 1940s to the 1980s.

Blum insightfully recounts a long and distinguished journey that began at Phillips Academy, where he first realized he could make a career of teaching and writing history. He tells how young men were socialized to the values of the Northeastern establishment in those years before World War II, and how as a non-practicing Jew he learned to over-come bigotry both at Andover and at Harvard, which then had no Jewish professors.

In 1957 Blum joined the faculty of Yale University's history department, widely regarded as the nation's best, where he became both influential and popular and where his students included one future U.S. president as well as others who aspired to the office. He reveals much about the inner workings of Ivy League education and tells of controversies over the Vietnam War and the Black Panthers, his role in Eugene McCarthy's presidential campaign, and how he searched for common ground between reactionary faculty and radical students.

More than a recounting of a singular life, Blum's story explains how political history was researched and written during the second half of the twentieth century, describing how the discipline evolved, gained ascendancy, and was challenged as historical fashions changed. It also offers revealing glimpses of such prominent academics as Kingman Brewster, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., C. Vann Woodward, and William Sloan Coffin.

Over a distinguished career, Blum witnessed considerable change in elite educational institutions, where minorities and women were grossly underrepresented when he first entered academia. In a memoir brimming with insight and laced with humor, he looks back at the academy--"not a refuge from reality but an alternative reality"--as he reflects upon his intellectual journey and his contributions to the study and writing of twentieth-century American history.

Should Hoover have taken more aggressive action to combat the Great Depression? Did Roosevelt's New Deal go too far? Should Truman have ordered the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima? These and other controversial issues stamped the presidencies of Herbert Hoover, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Harry Truman, and the crises they addressed marked a series of watersheds in American history. This rich resource of primary documents and commentary is a one-stop source for debating the central issues that shaped the Hoover, Roosevelt, and Truman presidencies. In their own words, these presidents articulate their positions on the key issues of their presidencies. Juxtaposed to their statements are relevant and interesting original source statements by the opposition. These opposing documents, along with introductions which place the issues in political context, will enable students to debate the great issues of the day.

This resource covers thirty-seven key issues and initiatives of the Hoover, Roosevelt, and Truman presidencies. The entry on each issue contains an overview of the issue and discussion of opposing viewpoints, followed by a statement from the president and the text of an opponent's dissenting point of view. Among the issues covered are Hoover's legislative attempts to deal with the Great Depression; Roosevelt's formation of New Deal agencies, his effort to pack the Supreme Court, and the actions he took that led the United States into war; Truman's momentous decision to drop the bomb, his efforts to rebuild Europe after the war, his firing of General MacArthur, and his efforts to deal with labor disputes. The section on each president concludes with suggested reading for further study. An introductory overview to the period and a timeline place the issues in chronological context.

This assessment of the transformation of European diplomacy which took place at the beginning of the 20th century focuses on the British and Russian diplomatic establishments during the years 1894 - 1917 in order to illustrate both the heterogeneity and complex nature of the "old diplomacy". A series of case studies is included to illustrate both the benefits and the pitfalls of generalizing about a complicated process of transformation that had a range of social, political, administrative and psychological dimensions.

Herbert Samuel's extraordinarily long political life coincided with the long drawn-out sunset of Liberalism as a dominant political force in Britain. His career in the Liberal Party began in the age of Gladstone and ended in the era of Grimond. At the turn of the century Samuel played a vital role in the formulation of the `New Liberalism', and later helped translate that doctrine into legislation that laid the foundations of the welfare state. He played a central role in the history of Zionism, serving as first British High Commissioner in Palestine from 1920 to 1925. He returned to office in the National Government of 1931, and led the Liberal Party between 1931 and 1935. In later life Samuel won a broad public audience as a philosopher, a respected elder statesman, and a much admired broadcaster. Bernard Wasserstein assesses Samuel's importance in British politics and in the emergence of the state of Israel. This accessible and scholarly biography, based on extensive research in all the available sources, provides a revealing portrait of a leading twentieth-century statesman.

An updated and revised edition of a lively account of British Conservativism, illuminated throughout by a concentration upon the men, and woman, who have led the Conservative party.This book is written by a big name author with trade acumen and a lively and engaging writing style. It offers detailed history and analysis from 1830 to the present day, including a new chapter on David Cameron's leadership. It provides revisionist accounts of Peel, Disraeli and Churchill.The second edition of this successful text has been thoroughly updated to take into account recent research, and now begins at 1830. Charmley examines the history of the party and takes the story through the recent 'wilderness years' following the 1997 election fiasco, right up to David Cameron's leadership.

This study investigates the connection between the regulation of opium and the exercise of imperial power in colonial Burma. It traces the opium industry from the British annexation of the Burmese territories of Arakan and Tenasserim in 1826 to the end of the colonial era, arguing that this connection was multi-dimensional. The British regime regulated opium to facilitate labour extraction, and the articulation of a rationale for opium policy was inextricable from the articulation of a rationale for colonial rule more generally. Evolving discourses about race invoked opium consumption. Finally, Burma's position in multiple transnational and imperial networks informed its colonial opium policy.

This volume adopts a distinctive thematic approach to the history of British imperialism from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, bringing together leading scholars representing an unusually wide range of historical approaches to the British Empire.
The contributors tackle the core themes in the history of the British Empire, including economics, religion, ideology, migration, the state, foundations of empire, decolonization, colonial knowledge, and imperial culture and identities. The essays trace the trajectory of their subject and explore how current understandings of issues have developed, examining key debates among historians.
The British Empire is essential reading for all students and scholars of imperial and colonial history.
Contributors: Tony Ballantyne, John Darwin, Andrew Dilley, Elizabeth Elbourne, Kent Fedorowich, Eliga Gould, Catherine Hall, Stephen Howe, Sarah Stockwell, Andrew Thompson, Stuart Ward, and Jon Wilson.

The central idea behind this book is that the globalisation and politicisation of traditional religious identities is a historical phenomenon with deep roots in the 19th-20th centuries. Tracing the emergence of 'Religious Internationals' as a distinctive new phenomenon in world history, it transforms our understanding of the place of religion in the modern world. Leading historians and social scientists break new ground by comparing the historical experiences of different faith communities in an age of globalization without comparing them as religions. In-depth case studies focus on the internationalist dimensions of Buddhism, Christianity (Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant), Hinduism, Judaism and Islam. Individually, they illuminate the complex processes whereby communities of believers became communities of opinion. Collectively, they shed new light on the origins and nature of global civil society, highlighting the role of religion as one of its motor forces from the start.

BETWEEN 1933 AND 1945 MEMBERS OF THREE GROUPS-THE Nazi fascists, Inner Emigration, and Exiles-fought with equal fervor over who could definitively claim to represent the authentically "great German culture," as it was culture that imparted real value to both the state and the individual. But when authorities made pronouncements about "culture" were they really talking about high art? This book analyzes the highly complex interconnections among the cultural-political concepts of these various ideological groups and asks why the most artistically ambitious art forms were viewed as politically important by all cultured (or even semi-cultured) Germans in the period from 1933 to 1945, with their ownership the object of a bitter struggle between key figures in the Nazi fascist regime, representatives of Inner Emigration, and Germans driven out of the Third Reich.

The volume focuses on the years following the First World War (1918-1923), when political, military, cultural, social and economic developments consolidated to a high degree in Eastern Europe. This period was shaped, on the one hand, by the efforts to establish an international structure for peace and to set previously oppressed nations on the road to emancipation. On the other hand, it was also defined by political revisionism and territorial claims, as well as a level of political violence that was effectively a continuation of the war in many places, albeit under modified conditions. Political decision-makers sought to protect the emerging nation states from radical political utopias but simultaneously had to rise to the challenges of a social and economic crisis, manage the reconstruction of the many extensively devastated landscapes and provide for the social care and support of victims of war.

The impressive Second Edition of this standard study incorporates important new evidence on the origins of the war from Chinese and Russian archives. It reveals that Stalin encouraged the attack on South Korea, but also confirms that the original initiative came from North Korea. Peter Lowe has also written an extended conclusion with a discussion of the Koreas in the late 1990s, and the challenges involved in securing their reunification.

Akira Iriye assesses Japan's international relations, from a Japanese perspective, in the century and a half since she ended her self-imposed isolation and resumed her place in the international community. The book is the author's own adaptation of two highly successful short studies, up to and after 1945, that he wrote for Japan. It ends with a consideration of Japan's international relations since the end of the Cold War, and her place in the world today. This is history written from within - and there could be no better interpreter of Japan to the West than this most distinguished of historians, who, himself Japanese, has long lived and taught in the United States.

The Andersons have committed themselves to a 20-year struggle to address wrongs that Denise suffered while employed at GM. Hired in 1982, under the 1973 Rehabilitation Act, a predecessor of the 1990 ADA, she suffered an on-the-job injury, but was disallowed to return to work after her medical release. Their journey was financially & emotionally costly, pursuing redress thru the federal courts, EEOC & the union. The book presents violations of the human/civil rights of a disabled American citizen. It is a testament to the strength & endurance of the Andersons. Dora Anderson, "The Rosa Parks of the Disabled Movement," has become the symbol for the supporter of the American disabled citizen. Endorsers Americans love an "underdog" story, even more, a happy ending, which is so glaringly absent in the Anderson book. The intent of the ADA was to balance the scales of opportunity, but as their saga reveals, those scales are badly tilted. They have been thru too much now to expect a happy ending, but a just one can still be written. All it takes is a nation that prizes the opportunity to do the right thing. Barry Marrow, Oscar Award-Winning Co-Writer for Rain Man & Producer "The Union" has played a key role in the economic life of the American working class. This book highlights the growing patterns of certain "union boses" sacrificing their rank & fiile on the alter of survival & political access, forcing a confrontation. At a time when unions need a stronger member driven leadership, we are in a sensitive moment when the real uniion leadership, the workers, must make their presence known & ensure the future of a much needed source of political strength & economic power in working classcommunities across the country. Odette Machado, Pres., Health/Humanitarian Employees Alliance Rights & Trades

This biographical study analyzes the careers and thinking of a dozen union leaders of Irish descent who contributed significantly to the union movement. The work demonstrates the pragmatic approach of the majority of these leaders arising from disappointing experience with radical ideas embraced in their youth. Their object was cohesion among diverse nationalities in the work force to build strong national unions able to eliminate destructive wage competition in ever-widening markets. Beginning with background on Irish immigration, the study follows developments from the 1870s and extends through those who were active in the 1950s on both coasts and in the mid-west. It is the first book written for scholars and others dealing with Irish-American unionists in depth.